Welcome

We are Margriet (1952) and Jan (1954); welcome to our travel site. Between August 2013 and November 2015 we drove over land from the Netherlands through the Middle East to South Africa and from January 2016 to April 2017 we traveled around in South America.

Since October 2012, we are the proud owners of a Toyota LandCruiser with camper construction that accompanies us. We call him "Dappere Dodo" (Brave Dodo).

The first plans for an overland trip came up in 1977 during a tour through Morocco and Algeria over paved roads with a normal car when we saw groups of mainly Swiss Land Rovers traveling across the Sahara to Tamanrassat and Timbuktu. That we wanted to do too! The next trigger were all retired Australians making long trips with their motorhomes, something that we wanted to do after our retirement as well. One night talking in Namibia with a Dutch couple that came from Europe overland via West Africa helped to make the plan more concrete. It did not remain a plan, but we've really done it. We are currently back in the Netherlands, but we are certainly going to make more trips in the future.

Enjoy our Popular Video Channel

Do you want to see the video recordings that we made during our trip or do you want to see more of our experiences of the past? Check out ourYouTube channel with over 50,000,000 views and 100,000 subscribers. There are about 250 clips of our overland trip, a highlights video and over 700 clips from earlier trips. You will find our traveling of previous years to other destinations including Burma, India, China / Tibet, southern Africa, Indonesia and Peru / Bolivia.

Contact

Subscribe at our contact pageif you want to be informed when a new blog is published or if you want to receive the newsletter that we send if we are unableto send a blog. The blog and the newsletter are in Dutch.

Structure of this Site

​We have a brief description and key statistics of every journey. The most important part are the blogs: one of the preparations and for all travel. The latter we update regularly when we are on the road. In the right column of the blog section, you can filter for example on country, trip and a few special topics. In addition, there is background stuff: paper, lodging, itinerary, etc. We hope this information is helpful to other travelers to prepare a similar journey.

The blog is in Dutch, because for most of our followers Dutch is the first language. The country information, which is especially for people preparing a similar trip is in English with exception of a few typical Dutch topics, such as Dutch taxes.

Preparation Trips

To prepare for the big journeys we made two short trips in the first half of 2013 to gain experience and to try everything out. In addition, we already had a lot of travel experience with other car and backpack trips. Here are our experiences of the preparation trips; the map below shows all countries where we have been together:

What is Overlanding?

Wikipedia describes overlanding as such: Overlanding is self-reliant travel to remote destinations where the journey is the principal goal. Typically, but not exclusively, it is accomplished with mechanized off-road capable transport, where the principal form of lodging is camping, often lasting for extended lengths of time (months to years), and spanning international borders.

Overlanding can reveal itself in many forms. Overland groups flock to Africa to experience the dark continent within the security of group travel. Our 3-month African odyssey was just such overlanding. Although we, as a group, were responsible for cooking, cleaning and setting up our own camp, the itinerary was set and we were accompanied with a guide and driver. The stress of finding our way was removed from the scenario, but there was no way around long, dusty, often boring drives, punctuated with extraordinary wildlife and tribal culture.

A more vagabonding type of overlanding has no set itinerary and is self-driving, but has a set time frame, such as we did with while driving across New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. With our own wheels but nowhere to be for weeks or months, we meandered these countries, criss-crossing as our hearts desired.

Then there is the mac-daddy of them all, long term overlanding where, as defined above, the journey is the goal. The idea to simply live. To create a life at your own pace and on your own terms. Where travel takes on an entirely different meaning and, rather than becoming a means to the end-game, becomes life simplified. Day to day becomes about the places you pass through and the people you meet along the way. A life lived out in the world, not just in your own neighborhood.

Overlanding is not for some, in fact, it’s not for most. Overlanding is NOT a vacation. It is simply life. It’s not all sundowners on a gorgeous tropical beach and breathtaking vistas. Not all incredible meals and cultural highlights. While all these are part of the draw of the open road, overlanding is also tedious and difficult. It’s long drives on terrible roads. It’s toilets and showers that are total crap, if they even exist. It’s camping in a parking lot at the end of a tough border crossing day. It’s having feet that are never quite fully clean.

Overlanding is like RTW backpacking on steroids, coupled with mechanical issues!

The ART of overlanding is just that, an art. To be successful long-term, an overlander must be flexible, adventurous, and willing to step far outside their comfort zone. Not knowing what the next day will bring is part of the joy, and part of the pain. And a life spent overlanding is exactly the life we are striving for. In spite of the challenges, nothing else brings quite the same overwhelming feeling of being really and truly alive.

As we countdown to Overland Expo, our conversations are centered on the fabled overlanders we will meet and the classes we will take, excited beyond words to become part of this select group of those who truly understand the search for something more.(copied frrom "The next big adventure")

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